A recent online poll commissioned by The Huffington Post revealed that women were twice as likely as men to use retail therapy as a way to cope with stress.
The study also revealed that men were more than twice as likely as women to say that they had never shopped out of stress and would never consider doing so in the future.
HuffPost’s survey found that those who shop to deal with anxiety (versus those who do not) were also…
- 46 percent more likely to exercise to cope with stress
- 86 percent more likely to eat to cope with stress
- 76 percent more likely to worry about their weight
Those who used retail therapy tend toward the “flight” side of fight vs. flight, distancing themselves from the stress with an unrelated activity rather than facing it head-on. In contrast, the respondents who said they never shop to deal with stress were more likely to cope by finding the root of their anxiety and confronting it.
